Last summer, the Department of Student Life created a new policy regarding “Performance, Presentations and Speaker[s].”
The policy focused on the amount of time that Chartered Student Organizations must take when attempting to schedule on-campus events. CSOs are now responsible for turning in a completed “Program Planning” form 20 business days before the event is to take place. This is a change from the required five days that was in effect last year.
David Young, operations manager of Student Life, expressed that an event now is defined as “anything that requires reserved space outside regular group meeting times.” Reserved space for holding events ranges from the ballrooms in the Busch Student Center to a classroom to green space down West Pine. If an organization wishes to hold an event that involves any members of the SLU community outside of group membership, Student Life must first approve the event.
When this policy change was presented to Student Government Association at its Sept. 15 meeting, many senators were unclear as to where this new extended notice requirement stemmed from.
“I don’t remember these 20 days being discussed,” Black Student Alliance Senator Kalé Kponee said during open discussion of the policy.
It turns out that this new policy was discussed during last year’s general assembly when the senate was contemplating a new speaker policy—one that dealt with censorship, not approval time.
“[This] went through policy review,” said SGA President Courtney Anvender. “Student and senators had an opportunity to weigh-in on it.”
Anvender expressed that this change in the event policy was possibly overshadowed by the debate in the speaker censorship policy that spanned across multiple senate meetings last spring.
Two senators from last year’s assembly were a part of the SGA Policy Review Committee, and served as senatorial representatives on the body that was working on developing this new event policy. Both senators are no longer participating in SGA.
While the policy was in its developmental stages last semester, it was not until this summer that Student Life put ideas to paper and created the now set policy.
In attempts to enhance student group organization, Young expressed that the new policy will help strive for organization.
“We have a lot of Chartered Student Organizations on campus, and a lot of times a CSO would schedule space and not follow through with their respective event,” Young said.
This, of course, leads to a lack of on-campus space for CSOs to hold events.
Though the policy is no longer up for debate or amendment, some senators expressed to Young that this may hinder events that can only be scheduled with short notice.
Some senators inquired whether this was going to be changed for groups who must deal with said circumstances; however, it does not look like that will happen.
“It would be difficult to justify a change,” Young said, and expressed that any inquiries or desired amendments to the policy must now he brought before the Vice President of Student Development.
Paul Paetow, vice president of Student Organizations, expressed that he is in support of the policy, and that it should not pose too many problems for CSOs.
Paetow said that this will turn out to be policy that can only help the groups, not hinder them.
“CSO leaders have responsibilities including being mindful with their organizations’ time,” Paetow said. “They will all be thoroughly informed about all the policy changes and this policy will be beneficial since planning events is something that needs to be done in advance.”
Two other bills were passed at the meeting.
